Extinct Towns & Villages of Washington County, Mississippi

Extract taken from Publication of the Mississippi Historical Society, By the Mississippi Historical Society, Edited by Franklin L. Riley, Secretary, Volume V, Oxford, Mississippi, 1902, pgs 377-378 , from chapter entitled “Extinct Towns and Villages of Mississippi” by Franklin L. Riley

Princeton – When Washington county was originally organized in 1800, Princeton was made its first seat of justice.  This place was located on the Mississippi river about ten miles above the boundary of the present county of Washington.  In the early part of the nineteenth century Princeton, or Princetown, was an important business place.  At the time of its greatest prosperity it had a population of about six hundred.

When old Washington county was divided in 1827, the county seat was removed to old Greenville.  From that date Princeton rapidly declined.  We are told that “S. B. Lawson was one of the last merchants of the place”, and that “in 1868 he sold the town site and remaining buildings to a colored man for $125.”[1]

Greenville – The old town of Greenville in Washington county was situated about a mile south of the present flourishing city of that name.  When Washington county was divided, creating the different counties now in the Yazoo delta, the county seat was removed from Princeton to Greenville.  The following information about old Greenville is taken from Goodspeed’s Memoirs’s:

“After the late war the legislature passed and act ordering the board of supervisors of the county to locate the new county seat within three miles of the old site, old Greenville having mostly caved into the river, or been destroyed during the war.”[2]

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